Friday, April 25, 2014

On this day in 1945, eight Russian armies completely
encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on
the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all
intents and purposes, Allied territory.

The Allies sounded the
death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of the
link-up between the two armies resulted in a 324-gun salute; in New York,
crowds burst into song and dance in the middle of Times Square. Among
the Soviet commanders who participated in this historic meeting of the
two armies was the renowned Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, who warned
a skeptical Stalin as early as June 1941 that Germany posed a serious
threat to the Soviet Union.

Zhukov would become invaluable in battling
German forces within Russia (Stalingrad and Moscow) and without. It was
also Zhukov who would demand and receive unconditional surrender of
Berlin from German General Krebs less than a week after encircling the
German capital. At the end of the war, Zhukov was awarded a military
medal of honor from Great Britain.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

On this day in 1876, Erich Raeder, proponent of an aggressive naval strategy and the man who convinced Adolf Hitler to invade Norway, is born.

Raeder
began his career by violating the terms of the post-World War I Treaty
of Versailles, advocating the construction of submarines in 1928 to
strengthen the German navy. He was made grand admiral during World War II
and executed the invasion of Norway and Denmark.

He fell out with
Hitler over strategy and was ultimately removed from his command. He
would end his career before the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg. Sentenced to life imprisonment for "instigation of the navy
to violate the rules of war," he was released because of ill health in
1955.

Friday, April 11, 2014

On this day in 1945, the American Third Army
liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a
camp that will be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.

As
American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald,
Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to
announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the
camp--including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the
camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner
answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not
be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was
not true.

The camp held thousands of prisoners, mostly slave
laborers. There were no gas chambers, but hundreds, sometimes thousands,
died monthly from disease, malnutrition, beatings, and executions.
Doctors performed medical experiments on inmates, testing the effects of
viral infections and vaccines.

Among the camp's most gruesome
characters was Ilse Koch, wife of the camp commandant, who was infamous
for her sadism. She often beat prisoners with a riding crop, and
collected lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of camp
victims.

Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

On this day in 1941, the German and Italian invaders
of Yugoslavia set up the Independent State of Croatia (also including
Bosnia and Herzegovina) and place nationalist leader Ante Pavelic's
Ustase, pro-fascist insurgents, in control of what is no more than a
puppet Axis regime.

The Ustase began a relentless persecution of
Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and antifascist Croats. As many as 350,000 to
450,000 victims were massacred, and the Jasenovac concentration camp
would become infamous as a slaughterhouse.

Croatia's Serbs gave
sporadic resistance, but it was the communist partisans, led by Josip
Broz Tito (a Croat himself), who provided antifascist leadership. By
1944, most of Croatia--apart from the main cities--was liberated from
Axis forces, and Croats joined partisan ranks in large numbers. As the
war neared its end, however, many Croats, especially those who had been
involved with the Ustase regime or who had opposed the communists,
sought refugee status with the Allies. But British commanders handed
them over to the partisans, who slaughtered tens of thousands, including
civilians, on forced marches and in death camps.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

On this day in 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the
American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and
courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were "This is the end--for
me, the beginning of life."

Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, lecturer at Berlin University, took to the radio and denounced the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip,
the leadership principle that was merely a synonym for dictatorship.
Bonhoeffer's broadcast was cut off before he could finish. Shortly
thereafter, he moved to London to pastor a German congregation, while
also giving support to the Confessing Church movement in Germany, a
declaration by Lutheran and evangelical pastors and theologians that
they would not have their churches co-opted by the Nazi government for
propagandistic purposes.

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1935 to run a
seminary for the Confessing Church; the government closed it in 1937.
Bonhoeffer's continued vocal objections to Nazi policies resulted in his
losing his freedom to lecture or publish. He soon joined the German
resistance movement, even the plot to assassinate Hitler. In April 1943,
shortly after becoming engaged to be married, Bonhoeffer was arrested
by the Gestapo.

Evidence implicating him in the plot to overthrow the
government came to light and he was court-martialed and sentenced to
die. While in prison, he acted as a counselor and pastor to prisoners of
all denominations. Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison was published posthumously. Among his celebrated works of theology are The Cost of Discipleship and Ethics.